Give me a break

By Jerina Zaloshnja
“Sixty dollars! It’s a new rule from above. 60 dollars,” spoke the man with the white coat and unshaved beard as he lazily chewed on his gum. I was struck. “Where am I to find sixty dollars?” I asked myself as I put my cold hands deep in my pockets knowing fully well that they would come up empty. I was sure that I had thirty dollars and a few cents in thereحy wife put as much in there early in the morning. We had asked earlier at the hospital and they had clearly answered: “the price for storing a cadaver in the morgue is exactly 30 dollars and change.”
-“Emergency situations call for emergency rules bro, the whole world knows that,”-said the man chewing on gum. “This is an emergency.”
I followed him like a well-trained puppy. The Gummy Man opened all the drawers of the run-down freezing room with the plaster falling off the walls, the humidity and the smell. “Emergency!” Indeed, an emergency right and proper unveiled in front of my eyes. There was nothing else you could call it but an emergency. In one of the drawers of the small freezing room of the morgue of our city hospital, there where a single cadaver ought to be stored, I saw with my own eyes that those people, meaning Gummy and his lively colleagues, had carried out an emergency over the dead bodies! They had placed two cadavers in one drawer and in one case evenō
What an emergency it must be in our city! I was horrified. I turned my eyes to Gummy and suddenly a wave of deep primordial respect for him washed over my entire being. How was he able to place two dead in the space of one while mustering the necessary poise to pronounce the situation “an emergency”?
Ecce Homo. Instead of being saddened by all of these eventsشhe sudden departure of my dear father from this life, the sixty dollar payment for emergency situations, the two-in-one deal at the morgue؉ found myself deeply respectful of Gummy. There we were, facing each other. His hands deep in his pockets, mine fiddling with the insufficient amount of money. I saw what had remained of my father six hours after his final closure of the eyes, and I may say that I was surprised at the contrast between man alive and man dead.
“We’ve got to stick him in broƨe can’t wait forever,” said Gummy with the airs of a professional.
I called my wife. “Bring me thirty more,” I told her. “What for,” she asked.
“For entertainment,” I snapped. Gummy got curious and elaborated: “Wha’,”- he asked. “Nothin'” I told him. I knew that my wife would not let me down. While Mary, my wife, had never enjoyed what they call a ‘healthy relationship’ with her father-in-law, she was imbued with a Protestantish ethic that meant that I would be able to not let my father stink.
And that is what happened. She arrived breathless half hour later, and gave me the money wordlessly. “Give them to Gƥntleman” I told her pointing at Gummy. “Šhe knows what to do.”
“An emergency situation, lady,” he repeated calmly and put the money in his pocket. I can’t remember if he gave us a bill for our emergency spending, but it is a certain thing that my father gained a place to stay.
“We’ll put him by this officer here,”-he said as he opened the last drawer to the right. There they were, two manly cadavers one over the other. A miracle! Gummy earned even more respect as he not only made the emergent seem natural, but he even remembered the names and professions of each cadaver under his watch!
“There we go,” he said after he balanced the new cadaver on top of the old one.
“And the late gentleman, what did he do, what was his profession?” he asked me.
“Nothing. He did nothing,” Mary answered in my place.
What more can I tell you? Some events are difficult to narrate for choice readers such as your honorable selves, but I will certainly do my best.
At the end of the story, Mary and I were 180 dollars poorer. Right after the business at the morgue was over, I ran over to a restaurant to order a lunch as it is our tradition after the funeral. I left there a nice little prepayment since, despite Mary’s insistence, I wanted to honor my dead father that had worked all his life for his offspring. The next day, when it was time for the burial, as I was hugging the cadaver one last time (they had brought him home two hours before the ceremony was due) someone touched both my shoulders and whispered: “stop everything, is frozen.”
“Of course he is frozen,” I told him angrily.
“No, stop, everything is frozen.”
“Whaaat?”
“We have to return poor dad at the morgue. An emergency,”- said Ben, my first degree cousin on my mother’s side.
An emergency! I was frozen worse than my progenitor.
“Yeah, bro! An emergency. No more room for the dead in the graveyardƨaven’t you watched the news?” asked Ben.
Yesƹes I remembered them warning about it in the news for quite a while now. And it seems they were right. In the last few days, the mayor was accusing the government for the absence of land to bury the dead in Tirana, absolving the municipality of all blame. On the other hand, a ministerƴhe pretty one, was doing the opposite. And, it turned out to be true! How could I forget about this emergency? “Of all the times to die…” I whispered.
-“Lord, what troubles!”-I heard my dear Mary. She came close to me and she tried to lift my spirits. But she was not as good at it as she used to be back then.
“Let us solve this as we are losing face,”-said Ben the first degree cousin and took control of the situation.
We returned father to the morgue where he stayed for another 48 hours. We also cancelled our lunch at the restaurant of course, but they did not return the prepayment. The people that had come from afar left somewhat angry but thankfully speechless as they had wasted all that money on the trip.
So, you will ask how did the burial take place as there must have been one since in this land of tradition we do not cremate. As good old father used to say: “even in war one finds the strength to bury the dead.” And, I did solve it. I called Athens where I talked to Sasha an honest-to-God immigrant who also happened to be my other first cousin from the father’s side and begged him to bury my father with his father who had left us fifteen years ago and now could not occupy too much space in his spacious and lonely grave.
Sasha was a bit hesitant, but when I assured him that all expenses for the common grave would be mine, he conceded. I spent five phone card for that concession of his and for finding out the location of the grave!
-“Third row?”
-“No, no, eighth, otto.”
-“First bed?”
-“Maybe, but check first. I haven’t been in a while because the Greeks at the borderŢ
-“The number of the grave?”
-“I told you to check first. If I had a Greek name thenŢ and Sasha put the phone down.
Finding the grave of Sasha’s father was not much of a problem. Willpower can carry you far in this country.
I must say I did not have any big problems after my phone conversation with cousin Sasha. Everything proceeded in the most common way possible. I mean, no emergencies.